Book cover of The Book of Records

Book description

Why did people, who lived so briefly in this universe, contain so much time?

Lina and her ailing father have taken refuge at an enclave called the Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions, among them three volumes from The Great Lives of Voyagers encyclopaedia series.…

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1 author picked The Book of Records as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The Book of Records portrays a surreal climate change future where refugees are living in a transitional community waiting for their next journey. The young woman protagonist (Lina) has access to three books, each portraying an important historical figure who lived in exile—Hannah Arendt, Baruch Spinoza, and Du Fu—covering distinct periods of human upheaval. The novel juxtaposes those stories with the Lina's growing intellectual and emotional development, providing her with the ballast to confront her family's past and her own future. These convergent "records" are evocative of contemporary times and urgently pertinent. The writing is lovely, wonderfully descriptive, and emotionally…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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